GEORGESCU, Ion

CRITICAL REVIEW

Ion Georgescu is the first Romanian modern sculptor. Formed in the French academic medium, Georgescu will never leave this territory. The works from his first period of creation are marked by a certain sensuality which he will leave behind in time. At the beginnings of the 1880s he works with a series of archaic themes in which we can perceive the oscillation between naturalism and academism (Spear thrower). Good portraitist, he reveals his qualities in a series of commemorative monuments and busts representing known people of the Romanian culture. His carefully modelled portraits combine the care for the fidelity of representation and a certain idealist vision that transpose the data of the model. The artist manages to individualize a type of conventional representation. A singular portrait in the gallery of his figures, which distinguishes itself by the classic simplicity of the description, is the bust of poet Vasile Alecsandri.